There was a restaurant with a large clock on an inside wall that faced out toward the sidewalk.
The restaurant owner noticed that every morning an older gentleman walked by, took out his pocket watch, and set its time according to this clock. This went on for over 10 years.
One day, the owner was outside when the gentleman with the pocket watch came up to enact his daily ritual. After watching the gentleman set his watch, the owner said to him, “I have watched you set your watch to my clock every morning for the last 10 years. I was wondering why you do this.”
“Well,” the gentleman responded, “I am the foreman at the lumber yard, two blocks north of here and I am responsible for setting the time clock whistle to five o’clock so all the workers in the yard know it’s quitting time. So I set my watch to your clock each morning to make sure it is accurate.”
The owner stood back in shock. “Oh my,” he replied. “I have been setting my clock to that whistle every day for the last 10 years.”
And the moral of the story: Double check the reliability of your sources. Make sure they know what they are talking about!
This was originally published on Mel Kleiman’s Humetrics blog.